GOTY Deliberations 2011: What did you learn? Conclude?

The great thing about the GiantBomb GOTY season is the transparency with which the GB crew present their decisions. Now this can both create negative views, or positive ones depending on who you ask.

Personally i learned three things this GOTY season, well maybe more so came to three conclusions.

1. I have lost immense respect for anything Brad says in regards to quality of games. In my OPINION most of his arguments regarding choices, were at their core " Yo dude cause " or "I blindly hate this game, or blindly love this game". Again this is simply my opinion, and am sure 90% of people would disagree with my views.

2. On the other hand i've gained a lot of respect for Patrick. I felt he presented his arguments extremely well, even if i would disagree with a few. I felt he placed a lot of effort into his ideas, and tried to check- himself before he wriggety-wrecked himself. (Do i need to say Opinion again?)

3. In regards to Mortal Kombat, i think i learned to take the GB crew's opinion regarding technical issues with a grain of salt. I guess the intensity and short time span with which they focus on a game, is mostly to blame for this result. I felt the 30 minute discussion on how MK9 multiplayer was borked, was baffling when I and everyone else i know who played MK9 on release had no issues with lobby matches. Matchmaking was broken ( Like every single fighting game), but who uses matchmaking in a fighting game? Again this is simply my opinion, from what i've observed.

Side Note: I felt so deflated when my expected Vinny rant defending Dark Souls, was concluded in 30 seconds. Especially since everyone else was avoiding that discussion like the plague, the tension was so high, yet the payoff so low! Damn you Vinny for being such a nice, agreeable person! Damn you!

Rayman and no Dark Souls?

No mention of LBP2? Even though it got 5 stars?

How the hell did Skyrim win over Saints Row The Third?

I was disappointed this year.

I disagree with number 1, I think Brad's arguments were just as good, maybe better, than Jeff and Vinny's. They seemed to keep coming back to this game is so insane, Burt Reynolds, VTOL's, etc. as their main argument. Which is not a very compelling in my opinion.

I stopped taking Brad's opinions too seriously when he gave Far Cry 2 4/5 stars so the podcast didn't grate me too much. Except Ryan picking a game he hasn't, or has barely played.

Surprised they included the Witcher in their top 10, I just figured they would find some ridiculous reason like they did with Dark Souls to keep it out, which apparently 1 typo on 1 item is enough to disqualify it from the top 10 list. All the other games are 100% perfect (cough Skyrim cough)

Also Rayman and L.A noire in the top 10? Really?

1. I have lost immense respect for anything Brad says in regards to quality of games. In my OPINION most of his arguments regarding choices, were at their core " Yo dude cause " or "I blindly hate this game, or blindly love this game". Again this is simply my opinion, and am sure 90% of people would disagree with my views.

2. On the other hand i've gained a lot of respect for Patrick. I felt he presented his arguments extremely well, even if i would disagree with a few. I felt he placed a lot of effort into his ideas, and tried to check- himself before he wriggety-wrecked himself. (Do i need to say Opinion again?)

@SirPsychoSexy said:

I disagree with number 1, I think Brad's arguments were just as good, maybe better, than Jeff and Vinny's. They seemed to keep coming back to this game is so insane, Burt Reynolds, VTOL's, etc. as their main argument. Which is not a very compelling in my opinion.

I agree that they fell back on that too much, and failed to talk about how the game itself was actually good. I don't care what anyone says, including those racing-arrows in the game world improves that genre tenfold.

Basically, Patrick was the only one making good arguments during that last discussion. Had he been the only one arguing for Skyrim I would be more accepting of it winning, but when Brad started straight-up lying about his time with the game I really hoped that someone would call him on it.

I also learned, again, that Jeff seems to be more likely to say a game is badly designed or unfair than to admit that he's bad at it.

I disagree with number 1, I think Brad's arguments were just as good, maybe better, than Jeff and Vinny's. They seemed to keep coming back to this game is so insane, Burt Reynolds, VTOL's, etc. as their main argument. Which is not a very compelling in my opinion.

@Make_Me_Mad: I agree the racing arrows are pretty revolutionary, I don't think they even touched on that. And as for Brad lying, are you referring to seeing the same type of boss at the end of dungeons? If so I also have not experienced that.

@InfamousBIG said:

Rayman and no Dark Souls?

No mention of LBP2? Even though it got 5 stars?

How the hell did Skyrim win over Saints Row The Third?

I was disappointed this year.

yeah, even if LBP2 wasn't likely to win much, it would have been nice to have heard it mentioned at least once. I feel like they just forgot that it had come out this year, maybe because it was once scheduled for a 2010 released, but got delayed into January of 2011. Personally, I have in on my top ten list, and consider it worthy of a runner up for best co-op.

I don't really care one way of the other about Skyrim vs SR3. But, I found that whole discussion really stupid. Focussing on the technical superiority of SR3 seemed silly, since SR3 isn't a technical masterpiece but any means. On the other side, ignoring a broken PS3 port of Skyrim isn't really fair, since a lot of people (myself included) are stuck with the PS3 version. It came down to which one they prefered to play, which is legit, but also totally subjective. So to try and win the argument, they attacked the games' technical points mercilessly instead on focussing on making positive arguments for what made the games fun to play.

@SirPsychoSexy: I did experience that to some degree. I went full mage at first and need to equip my dude with anti-shock gear to survive those dungeons with Magicka intact, but after 125 hours I got bored of my mage and switched to one handed and everyone was using ice on me all of a sudden. I wouldn't hold that against the game, though, I thought that was clever design.

1. Brad is terrible at defending his points

2. I feel like VInny wanted Witcher 2 higher on the list

3. People went from loving LA Noire to just not giving a damn (Myself included)

4. Ryan knows when he can't win

5. Jeff doesn't

6. Patrick is a wise man and now might be my second favorite GB member.

7. Patrick is the best at persuading ever, I can't think anyone else on the planet could have got Rayman onto that list.

8. Multilayer doesn't matter at all. (Or at least very little and I understand the reasoning for it.)

9. Vinny continues to say great things.

10. I feel like I hate Skyrim and Saints Row The Third more. Thanks guys.

11. I know why MK wasn't on the list.

12. "I can't follow you down this path"

I really don't think Brad's arguments are as bad as you make it seem. I agree he get really arrogant in end of the year discussions, but "You can't get an experience like this anywhere"is a very valid argument.  Fact is you can still get the explosive insane fun in Just Cause 2 as well, only that SR was executed better. 
 
When Brad said Saints Row's best parts were the parts you were not playing, which I think is a bit of a stretch, I thought about it for a second and actually agree. Most of what made SR great for me was the randomness and funny writing as presented by the cutscenes, but never was the actual gameplay that interesting and different from other games. Granted he did not upgrade weapons until he found out it made such a difference, he saw the game in its most "game" form. With that in mind his argument of "you can't have fun until you turn cheats on" becomes perfectly valid. The shooting is dull unless you have explosive rounds or something. Side activities are not varied enough either. Vinny's point of "you only have to do it five times" seems almost weak. Jeff may have argued that the Skyrim dungeons are boring, but they are still varied enough that even if you are doing basically the same thing, it still feels fresh because you are given a different context each time. Driving with a tiger is not crazy when you play it the second time, let alone three more times.  
 
I'm just saying, Brad made some great points, and every one around the table has made bad points as well. If it's his arrogance that annoys you to the point you don't want to think about his arguments, then I would say you are no different from him.

The only thing about the whole Brad Vs. Jeff is that jeff kept giving examples on why skyrim shouldn't get the #1 spot and Brad conveniently avoided them or steered them away.

1. Patrick is my new favorite Bombcaster. He's the most rational and was willing to defend Catherine.
2. Jeff is my new least favorite Bombcast. Seriously, the stuff out of that dude's mouth is pure garbage 9 times out of 10 when it comes to GOTY. I love him all year round, until he decides that Dark Souls is a bad game because he played three hours of it or LA Noire is a tech demo because he played zero hours of it, and will spend a full hour trying to win an argument he know will never happen. Did he honestly expect Saints Row to win? Just because there was dumb stuff in it doesn't mean it's enough to take down a game that was legitimately crafted and absolutely brilliant (I'm talking about Portal 2 btw). Skyrim's alright I guess.
3. Ryan is really good at talking about games he's never played.
4. Vinny only cares about fun in video games.
5. Portal 2 got the shaft. The only good parts are the story? Break, give me a fucking one.
6. Little Big Planet 2. That is all. One mention for soundtrack and that's fucking it. I suppose five stars in January is like three in December, espcially when the game is on PS3.
7. ZodiacMothefucker is the realest man on the internet.
8. Opinions made and remade over the year are basically relative with GOTY.
9. Iron Brigade is better than Trenched.
10. That joke really doesn't get old.

All of this shit is poison. I need to stop listening to these. At least the final GOTY ones. I went from loving Skyrim and wanting to play Saints Row to not wanting to play Saints Row and looking at Skyrim in a much more discerning light. It still holds up though.

Neither side did a particularly good job of arguing for their game, perhaps the sole exception being Patrick with some of his arguing points. I do feel that Brad did a poorer job than Vinny and Jeff though, which is why him winning had me feeling disappointed for a few minutes. Losers aren't meant to win, and he was on the losing side in that argument by any metric -- if you measure it by how he conducted the debate, the value of his arguments, and so on.

Also not sure why Ryan was given a vote at all. Saying "this game loses because it ended shy of thirty hours" is not a legitmate point, to put it nicely.

@Mordukai said:

The only thing about the whole Brad Vs. Jeff is that jeff kept giving examples on why skyrim shouldn't get the #1 spot and Brad conveniently avoided them or steered them away.

Pretty much this. I am not sure that I could have talked Saint's Row: The Third into the number one spot (which I loved WAY more than Skyrim), but I know that more could have been said about Skyrim than "guys its Skyrim."

@ZanzibarBreeze said:

Also not sure why Ryan was given a vote at all. Saying "this game loses because it ended shy of thirty hours" is not a legitmate point, to put it nicely.

I am glad to see I wasn't the only person who brought up this point in other related threads. Straw man at it's finest, I think. You're disliking a game for what it fundamentally isn't, rather than something it didn't do, or did poorly, (even though those points were mentioned, too).

@ThePickle said:

1. Did he honestly expect Saints Row to win? Just because there was dumb stuff in it doesn't mean it's enough to take down a game that was legitimately crafted and absolutely brilliant (I'm talking about Portal 2 btw). Skyrim's alright I guess.

Did he expect to win? Sure he did, with good reason. Three of the five people in that room picked Saints Row 3 as their game of the year. A majority of the staff said Saints Row 3 was their game of the year, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to fight that fight.

@themangalist: It's not his arrogance, which I'm not sure was even present in the argument. Hell, I'm not sure he can be arrogant- dude is humbler than your average monk 99% of the time. I just find it incredibly off-putting the way that he basically plugged his ears to all complaints about Skyrim, or tried to downplay them into nonexistence. The fact is that there are some great quests in Skyrim, but the majority of them, the Radiant quests that get so hyped up, are just extremely boring and simple. There's no new flavor to retrieving some lost heirloom for a dude from a random cave that will have either Bandits or Draugr. It might be a sword, or a lost helmet, or some amulet from his hometown, but it's the same quest with the same lackluster rewards.

And that's not to say Saints Row doesn't have problems- I'm well aware that pretty much all the enemies in that game behave similarly, and that you're pretty much fighting them all the time. The difference is that, in Saints Row, the shooting feels good enough, and the mechanics are solid enough, that I just didn't get bored of it. I've played that game- including a decent portion of those so-abhorred side missions- about three and a half times now. I'm doing that because I want to hear the different voices for the main character, and the game still isn't boring to me, the combat still hasn't gotten old, the driving is still fun, and it's still funny. I can handle these bizarre, repetitious missions because in the end, Saints Row has enough personality, enough humor, enough good writing, and above all some fantastic gameplay. I put more than 90 hours into two separate characters in Skyrim, and I've put around 60 into Saints Row the Third. I finished Saints Row several times over already, and yeah, I'll probably run out of things to do and lines of dialogue to hear, but I want to wring every ounce out of that game. I don't have that urge with Skyrim.

Brad sucked in the final discussion, period. Every critique he had for SR also applied to Skyrim. He never made one valid argument to why Skyrim should have won and completely ignored most of Jeff's arguments for SR. To me it seems like Skyrim won because Brad was willing to argue longer than anyone else and nothing anyone else could have said would have made him back down. He went into the discussion with a mindset that he wasn't leaving until Skyrim won. Ryan knew that and didn't even bother arguing against it. By the end Jeff realized it and gave up. He and Vinny never conceited that Skyrim is the better game, they were just tired of the argument.

I really enjoyed the Russian roulette formula, made the whole thing a lot more enjoyable.

Regardless of the quality of the argument listening to Brad debate is just as frustrating as ever (Even when he has your side of the argument).

Partrick is a pretty class act sometimes. (Might have to rethink that being a hater thing)

Vinny got up in arms for the thing I didn't expect.

Jeff still hates Dark Souls, which is weird because from playing it, it just seems like a game he should love. In some ways it has very similar sensibilities to old arcade games. (I'm suspicious that he just might hate the more outspoken fans of Demon's Souls, because yoh you guys are kinda annoying ever heard of letting something you love speak for itself.)

Vinny mentioning that the perk system in Skyrim isn't a true rpg leveling system, when the Witcher 2 uses, wait for it, "A PERK SYSTEM" made me laugh pretty hard. Especially since in skyrim's system is just a layer they've added on top of the old hit stuff level up skill system they've had for ever...

Skyrim winning game of the year was a disappointment, I feel like Saint's Row the Third better holds to the sensibilities of this website and it's editors (other than Brad). Ryan pulling his chips out of that fight at the last second and even supporting the Skyrim argument was a great twist. I visualized it as if the great generals of the light banded together to defend the souls of mankind, however one turned face and gave his soul to the dark lords, and such did end the reign of heaven as the fires of the abyss burned across the face of the world. Maybe a bit dramatic, but it made me laugh to think about it in such a goofy context.

The height at which Bastion continues to get a mention on the list personally is a bit disappointing, for me it doesn't feel like a top 3 game. I could definitely get behind a top 10, but better than portal 2 and the witcher 2, damn son you cuhrazy. It's a different thing of course so you have to go by relative comparison and not direct, but still cuh-razy. Regardless it's a subjective list so there's nothing to get heated about, that's just my personal feelings on it's placement.

Overall a megaton better than last year, which was literally impossible to listen to without wincing half the time.

I still maintain that these podcast are shit listening, and I really cross my fingers that they aren't the first thing anyone experiences of this website.

Things that I learned after the GOTY podcast...I should play Saint Row

All I know is that I went from kind of not liking Patrick to actively hating him. Every time I hear his voice I want to turn the podcast off, and did a few times.

..and I don't like turning off the podcast.

I think all GOTY stuff is always dumb because in the end it comes down to degrading games instead of praising them. I agreed with Jeff when he suggested they should start with games that have to be on the list, rather than immediately focusing on the negative aspect and cutting everything. It just makes the whole end-of-year stuff such a downer when the entire podcast is people telling eachother all the bad qualities of the games they really like. My favourite part of all this GOTY content was all the awesome FMV that they did because that stuff is fun as heck, and all their goofy award deliberations were really fun until the final one. I didn't play many games that released in 2011 and they still managed to entertain me, so that's pretty great!

I'm just always surprised no one was stabbed.

I learned that they should maybe take a break after they got their 10 games together and finish off the top 10 ranking and #1 discussion at a later point so they're not too tired and fed up with sitting in the room which I believe drags down their willingness to have long/"serious" discussions about the games.

I also learned, probably shouldn't listen to the last GOTY podcast.

I enjoyed all of the discussion, except the Skyrim vs Saints Row The Third argument that didn't really go anywhere.

They should have just made it a draw.

@WilliamHenry: I don't agree, that they were just tired of Brad. This happens every year. Brad and Jeff go at it, and argue about different games. Lats year it was Mass Effect 2 vs Red Dead Redemption. In 2009 it was Batman Arkham Asylum against Uncharted 2. And a year before that they argued about GTA IV and MGS 4. Both of them argue similarly about the games they choose as winners. And both of their arguments can be boiled down to simple statements. Jeff's would be: "Yo, Saints Row has some crazy shit it in" and Brad's: "Dude, Skyrim is a big-ass, open-ass world".

I think Ryan was very smart to stay out of this debate most of the time, because he did not play Skyrim (I think he has not). And I don't get how someone state, that he did not pick Saints Row "just because it was short of 30 hours". If someone thinks that is the case, then they missed his point, that even after those 30 hours (As Jeff said, that game can be finished in 8 - 12 hours.), he wanted more, but there was none for him to play more.

I do agree, that Patrick was the best to present his points and to defend them, while still being fair. And I think Vinny was the one, that at times was the worst at that. Saying that Skyrim can be less of an RPG, just because one cannot distribute points into skills is a bad argument to be made. Skyrim does that, but the traditional plus button is replaced with doing the stuff yourself, like swinging the sword X times equals the same as pressing one time a button in your character screen. I doubt he would call The Witcher 2 less of an RPG, because it also uses a perk system.

A game only one of them played can rank higher than a game everyone played and enjoyed....

Yakuza 4 was easily the best story of the year.

This year it took one of us to get the user GOTYs going which I hope is not an indication for the current state of the staff/community relation. Besides that, Giant Bomb (along with other websites) reaffirmed my belief that GOTY awards are mostly for the lols.

I'm not complaining or anything, it's just that, based on their personal lists and the actual debate, it seems odd to me that Skyrim won over Saints Row.

@DeeGee said:

@ThePickle said:

1. Did he honestly expect Saints Row to win? Just because there was dumb stuff in it doesn't mean it's enough to take down a game that was legitimately crafted and absolutely brilliant (I'm talking about Portal 2 btw). Skyrim's alright I guess.

Did he expect to win? Sure he did, with good reason. Three of the five people in that room picked Saints Row 3 as their game of the year. A majority of the staff said Saints Row 3 was their game of the year, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to fight that fight.

Personal top tens are irrelevant. 3 out of 5 people could've put Duke Nukem at the top of their list and that wouldn't have helped it in the fight. When you have the biggest champion of Saints Row voting for the other game, and your biggest argument is that the game has a lot of dumb stuff, you're sunk and its best to admit it.

Ryan needs to reevaluate his commitment to gaming journalism if he didn't bother playing the game he voted as GOTY.

I always thought that the arguments for SR3 were pretty weak. I understand that different reviewers give different scores, and the reviewer for SR3 wasn't even there, but Ryan and Jeff never seemed willing to discuss the things that made SR3 a four star game on GB. I'm not saying here that the amount of stars should always be the primary factor during GOTY discussions, but the text in the review itself that led to that score, the problems that Alex had with the game (or at least the things that he thought made it worse) weren't discussed, because (by Ryan, Jeff, and Vinny's reasoning) "LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL". Which is pretty much why SR3 would have won this year.

My sentence structure was terrible, sorry.

I thought the process of elimination was fantastic, but I think they gave up on a few games too easily and put up too much of a fight for other games. But I guess /that/ is just my opinion on the games themselves. Mainly I was disappointed with the lack of good arguments. Seems like once they got the top 10, they had the order figured out within 10 minutes. Then 30 minutes arguing over Skyrim and Saints Row: The Third, where Ryan gave up and decided Skyrim should win because Saints Row was under 30 hours.

I realized that Jeff often only cares about the shallow surface dressings of a lot of games.

I also learned that all of the bombcast guys (excluding maybe Patrick and Brad) think games should only ever be entertainment. I guess that's fine, but I disagree.

This years' GOTY debate was kind of a letdown compared to last year. I felt like no one was really scoring good points for either Saints Row or Skyrim or doing a particularly good job defending them either. I don't feel duders were putting any thought into their responses; it seemed like everyone was operating on knee jerks. Except for maybe Patrick, in moments. I definitely don't get the impression that anyone prepared even the bones of a case for their game, and that it was all seat of your pants decisionmaking. This is fine for other categories, but I think a satisfying goty discussion should involve at least a modicum of preparation. I'm not asking for a high school debate here, but maybe they could have spent a week or two ruminating on why their goty pick deserved it. Neither Jeff nor Brad seemed to have thought about their choices at all.

And for all their 'most' jokes, it seemed like Ryan's principal objection to SRTT was that it didn't have as much content as Skyrim. Of course it doesn't! Nothing does. Imo, the duders have been talking up SRTT since it came out (and it was Vinny's #1!) since it came out and watching them collectively buckle (except for Jeff) at the last second was pretty strange. Where was vinny in this anyway?

There were good arguments to be made for Skyrim, and I think the closest Brad came to making them was saying that Skyrim advanced the genre with its dynamic quest system, whereas saints row merely had a bunch of great, wacky writing bolted on top of a standard open world crime game.

Considering I don't really care about what they picked so much as the process, I loved the podcasts. Ryan's heel-turn to defend Skyrim at the end, what a twist! I laughed, I cried, I laughed some more.

I didn't listen to the deliberations, but I liked the video of the top ten. It was fun.

I learned that if all else fails, and I found myself in the writing-about-video-games business, I'd avoid participating in GOTY talks like the goddamn plague. Though I guess that's every year. Maybe it is fun to let that stress and anger out for a day. But boy oh boy, spending hours in a sweaty, salty podcasting room sounds like just about how I wouldn't want to spend any of my time.

I want to know what the fuck happened to Best Ending

@Bocam said:

I want to know what the fuck happened to Best Ending

Oh wow, you're right. What the heck!?

That's bullshit my friend, the biggest argument, from what I heard, was that Skyrim was buggy. And Saints Row The Third is not? I do kind of think that Brad was....crude, when it came to defending Skyrim, but the dude was just passionate and couldn't see a reason as for why Saints Row The Third should be first. Yes, It's a great game, but really, is anyone going to remember it in 10 years? And if they do, they'll go, ohhhh yeah, it's that crazy game and just move on. Where as Skyrim will be remembered as that Elder Scrolls game that surpassed Oblivion in every way.
Also, the most important thing i learned....It took actual war crimes for Duke to lose the worst game of the year award.

They must have known this would end up at Skyrim vs. Saints Row weeks ago, I find it extremely weird Ryan didn't take the time to put at least a few hours into Skyrim before they deliberated on it. Remember during the MGS4 vs. GTAIV debate, when they took a break and Brad played more of GTA and changed his mind? Something like that should have happened again so Ryan could've had some informed things to say.

I learned that Jeff pretty much runs things up in here. Seriously, Track Mania? If you're into it that's cool but does this get even the slightest mention anywhere else?

That's bullshit my friend, the biggest argument, from what I heard, was that Skyrim was buggy. And Saints Row The Third is not? I do kind of think that Brad was....crude, when it came to defending Skyrim, but the dude was just passionate and couldn't see a reason as for why Saints Row The Third should be first. Yes, It's a great game, but really, is anyone going to remember it in 10 years? And if they do, they'll go, ohhhh yeah, it's that crazy game and just move on. Where as Skyrim will be remembered as that Elder Scrolls game that surpassed Oblivion in every way. Also, the most important thing i learned....It took actual war crimes for Duke to lose the worst game of the year award.

The thing is, both games are great and deserve to be #1, it's just that Brad's argument was so asinine that it makes you question whether Skyrim was all that good to begin with.

Anyway, I learned that there are still people who somehow think LA Noire was a good game. Amazing.